Why Some People Protest and Others Stay Home: Self-Esteem Holds the Answer

When democracy begins to erode, millions of people who oppose the erosion never take to the streets, while a smaller number show up again and again, week after week, in rain, heat, and uncertainty. What separates the protester from the equally angry non-protester, and what keeps some demonstrators coming back far more persistently than others? A new study published in Current Psychology by Doron Shultziner of Jerusalem Multidisciplinary College and New York University offers a striking answer that departs from the dominant models in social psychology: the decisive factor is not group identity or even belief in the protest’s chances of success, but the way collective action is woven into a person’s self-esteem.

The research tackles two questions that have long puzzled scholars of collective action. First, what psychologically differentiates people who participate in protest from those who share their opposition to democratic backsliding but remain on the sidelines? Second, why do some individuals participate more frequently or persistently than others once they have decided to act? These questions matter because democratic backsliding, the gradual dismantling of democratic institutions by elected leaders, has become one of the defining political phenomena of the past decade, and mass mobilization has repeatedly proven to be one of the few forces capable of halting it.

To answer these questions, Shultziner proposes what he calls a self-evaluative framework for collective action and inaction. The framework rests on three psychological pillars. The first is the perceived threat to one’s self-concept, the sense that the political situation endangers who you believe yourself to be and the values that define you. The second comprises self-esteem mechanisms, specifically the drive to avoid negative self-evaluations, such as the shame of standing by while one’s country slides toward autocracy, and the drive to maintain positive self-worth by acting in accordance with one’s moral identity. The third is efficacy perception, the classic belief that one’s actions can actually make a difference.

The empirical foundation of the study is unusually robust. It combines two studies conducted during a period of intense democratic crisis in Israel, where a sweeping judicial overhaul proposed in 2023 triggered one of the largest sustained protest movements in the country’s history. The first was an online survey of 1,135 respondents that directly compared protesters with non-protesters who opposed the government’s plan. The second was a field study of 1,514 participants that examined which psychological factors were associated with the duration and intensity of protest participation over time. This dual design allowed the researcher to test not only what pushes people into the streets in the first place, but what keeps them there.

The findings are nuanced and, in places, surprising. Comparing protesters to non-protesters, the study found that three factors consistently distinguished the two groups: the perceived threat to their self-concept, the role that protest occupied as a domain of self-esteem in their lives, and their perceptions of efficacy. People who saw the political crisis as an existential challenge to their identity, who experienced demonstrating as an expression of who they are, and who believed their participation mattered were significantly more likely to have joined the protests.

But when the analysis turned to participation intensity, how often and how persistently people protested, a different picture emerged. Perceived threat to the self-concept and self-esteem mechanisms were associated with how much people participated, yet efficacy perceptions were not. In other words, believing that the protest would succeed helped explain whether someone showed up at all, but it did not explain why some people returned dozens of times while others came once or twice. The people who sustained their involvement over months were those for whom protest had become tied to their sense of self-worth, a way of avoiding the corrosive feeling of complicity and of affirming their identity as people who stand up for democracy.

This dissociation between the predictors of participation and the predictors of persistence is among the study’s most consequential contributions. Much of the existing literature, including influential social identity models of collective action, treats participation as a relatively uniform outcome predicted by identity, grievance, and efficacy. The new findings suggest instead that getting people through the door and keeping them engaged are governed by partly distinct psychological processes. Movements that want to sustain momentum through long struggles against democratic erosion, the study implies, cannot rely solely on convincing supporters that victory is possible. They must also offer participants a domain in which their self-esteem is invested, a place where showing up feels like being one’s true self.

The theoretical stakes of this argument are considerable. Social identity theory and its descendants, such as the integrative social identity model of collective action, locate the engine of protest in identification with a group: people act collectively when their group identity is salient, when they perceive injustice against the group, and when they believe collective action is efficacious. Shultziner’s self-evaluative framework shifts the analytical focus from the group to the self. Threat here is not only or primarily a threat to the group’s status or existence, but a threat to the individual’s self-concept, and the motivational payoff of action is not only group advancement but the protection and enhancement of personal self-worth. The framework draws on long-standing psychological theory about self-discrepancy, self-affirmation, and the functions of self-esteem, applying these individual-level mechanisms to the collective arena.

The study’s context gives its findings particular weight. Israel’s 2023 protest movement against the judicial overhaul was remarkable for its scale, duration, and social breadth, drawing in sectors of society, including reserve military officers and high-tech workers, that rarely engage in mass protest. Surveys cited in the research indicate that a large majority of opponents to the legislation never attended a demonstration, making the country a natural laboratory for the protester-versus-non-protester comparison. The field study, conducted at protest sites, captured the variation in commitment among those who did attend, from occasional participants to those present at nearly every weekly demonstration. The research received ethics approval from the Jerusalem Multidisciplinary College and was funded by the institution, and the author reports no conflicts of interest.

Beyond its academic contributions, the study carries practical implications for anyone concerned with the defense of democracy. If self-esteem mechanisms sustain long-term participation, then movements under democratic backsliding should think carefully about how they frame participation: not merely as a strategic instrument with uncertain payoffs, but as a moral expression of personal identity whose psychological rewards are immediate and intrinsic, regardless of the political outcome. The research also helps explain a well-documented puzzle in civic engagement, the persistent gap between intention and behavior, by suggesting that many opponents of backsliding lack the self-conceptual stakes that convert private disapproval into public action. Understanding those stakes, the study argues, offers a unified way to comprehend both why people act and why they keep acting, and it opens a promising line of inquiry into the psychological foundations of democratic resilience at a moment when those foundations are being tested around the world.

Subject of Research: Psychological mechanisms of self-esteem and self-concept threat in collective action participation during democratic backsliding

Article Title: Self-evaluative framework for collective action and inaction: self-esteem mechanisms and participation intensity under democratic backsliding

Article References: Shultziner, D. (2026). Self-evaluative framework for collective action and inaction: self-esteem mechanisms and participation intensity under democratic backsliding. Current Psychology, 45(18), Article 1517. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-026-10072-1

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s12144-026-10072-1

Keywords: collective action, democratic backsliding, self-esteem, protest, social movements, political psychology, self-concept, efficacy, social identity, participation intensity, Current Psychology, Israel protests